


We'll Find Our Love Anew

by Maidenjedi



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:55:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26418316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: It takes more than a kiss to break the curse.
Relationships: Prince Charming | David Nolan/Snow White | Mary Margaret Blanchard
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Het Swap Exchange 2020





	We'll Find Our Love Anew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [useyourtelescope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/useyourtelescope/gifts).



> Title taken from the lyrics of "Someday My Prince Will Come," from Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves." 
> 
> AU ending for season one.

As quickly and terribly as it had fallen upon them, the curse lifted in a slow wave. Red remembered hours before Granny. Geppetto and Blue remembered, but only confused Archie in their effusive joy.

David remembered. _Charming. Prince James. David, a shepherd._ He bent over in phantom pain, the moment the sword entered his flesh as fresh as though it were happening.

Standing straight as the pain fled, he saw Snow across the street.

_Mary Margaret._

“Snow!” he cried, and the woman whose beautiful hair was shorn, whose sunny face sagged in desperate sadness looked up, as though expecting the sky to open.

“Snow!” he said again, the realization hitting him that maybe, she didn’t remember. She looked over at him. She frowned, ducked her head, and walked on.

_She didn’t remember._

The curse was broken.

Was it, though? Really?

-

Over the course of a day, half of Storybrooke was experiencing a rush of joy, quenched quickly as the other half reacted in confusion, even fear.

Some left the town, and their terrible fate was sealed as they left it behind. They hadn’t woken up, and never would, trapped now in cursed personas for life.

Blue looked for Rumpelstiltskin, and found him, face buried in his hands, in Mr. Gold’s shop.

“I was certain, I was certain, it was her, she was the key….”

He was mumbling, rambling. Blue was shocked to see it – he was a ranting, raving creature, perhaps mad. 

He started as he looked up and saw her standing there.

“Mother Superior,” he said, voice raising on the last syllable in a questioning, demanding note.

“No,” she shook her head. “And yes. Blue.”

“It worked. And it didn’t,” he confirmed, incredulous. “Why didn’t it?”

“I hoped you knew.”

He laughed, the Dark One’s frightening giggle disconcerting coming from the face and form of an upright citizen in the Land Without Magic. “I knew? I thought I knew. Mary, Mary, quite contrary. I knew, and it didn’t work. I didn’t know at all.”

-

Red handed him a glass of water. 

“She didn’t recognize you?”

“She recognized David Nolan. Not me.” He stared at the glass.

The same story, over and over. The awakened had gathered at the diner, drawn to each other and devastated at how many were missing. Ella held her child and wept in a booth next to a scared Hansel and devastated Geppetto; Doc and Happy and Sleepy sat at the counter, drinking beers and trying not to look around for their family. 

“Where’s Emma?”

“I haven’t…I didn’t think to look.” With that admission, David’s eyes welled with tears and Red flushed, completely unprepared to deal with a broken, sad Prince. “For a moment, I thought she’d be looking for us. But what if she doesn’t know?”

“Doesn’t know the curse is broken, you mean? Wouldn’t she, though? She was the one who was supposed to break it.”

“It isn’t broken. You can see that, just look around. How many are missing tonight, asleep in homes they believe are theirs but are in fact prisons? No, something is wrong, something happened.”

He wiped at his face and stood. 

“Where are you going?”

“The hospital.”

-

Mary Margaret stood outside Henry’s room, clutching her purse to her chest, trying to decide what to do.

She had intended to leave Storybrooke for Boston, but she’d gotten as far as the town line and turned around. She couldn’t explain it. She had no real tie to Henry, she was just his teacher. Nor did she have one to Emma, not really. They hadn’t known each other that long.

The excuses ran through her mind on constant repeat. She told herself she needed to leave, she needed space. 

She needed so many things.

Emma came out of the room, looking at the floor.

“Hey,” Mary Margaret said, voice soft and tentative. “How’s he doing?”

Emma looked up in surprise. “Sn…Mary Margaret? What are you doing here? I thought you’d be….”

“Gone, I know,” said Mary Margaret in a rush. “And I was going, I was almost out of town but I just had to…I had to make sure he was okay. I couldn’t just leave….”

Emma was frowning, confusion clear on her brow, but now it was Mary Margaret who stared at the floor and didn’t see. 

_She doesn’t know. It didn’t work._

Henry had woken to Emma’s kiss. And Emma hadn’t felt anything happen the way Henry said she would; there was no sudden magic wave to sweep through her and hit everyone in its path with change. But there’d been a nurse who came in, blinking as though the sun had just hit her eyes, who told them her name was Rapunzel. And a doctor, not Whale, who’d talked about finding his daughter, the match girl (her name was Marie, back _there_ ). But Whale was Whale, and most of the nurses just plain nurses, and Henry was puzzled. He kept going over the pages of his book, as if the answer were there, and finally Dr. Whale had insisted on rest and pulled Emma aside to press the idea of a psych evaluation. She’d chased him out and looked around for Regina, who’d gone some hours past. 

Emma had thought Henry was just wrong about absolutely everyone, the whole town, being cursed. Maybe it hadn’t worked the way they thought to begin with.

But to have Snow White, _the_ Snow White, who by Henry’s and the book’s account was Emma’s own _mother_ not remember!

Mary Margaret looked up, and took Emma’s confusion for something else entirely, and continued to babble on about wanting to leave but not being able to.

Emma reached out and took her hand.

The room shook.

-

The town shook.

Lights flickered and buildings swayed; the sidewalk bowed beneath David and Red’s feet.

“What the hell?!”

They ran the rest of the way to the hospital. David yelled to Red to stay outside and he would be right back, he would get Emma and Henry, but Red didn’t respond.

He turned back to look and realized Red was gone, and the ground shook even harder.

He made to go into the hospital, but when he opened his eyes, he saw a castle.

-

Emma and Mary Margaret found themselves in a thicket. The word came to Emma’s mind unbidden and she rubbed her eyes.

Mary Margaret stood before her, hair grown long, in a dressing gown. She heard a shout behind her, and turned to find Henry, in an outfit Emma couldn’t describe, laughing.

He was laughing, and around them, faster than Emma could turn her head to look, or blink to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks, others appeared. Granny, Ruby, Ashley. Leroy. Michael and his daughter. Others Emma had seen around town, and none of them quite like she had known them.

They looked like characters from a dozen fairy tales and more. Like they’d walked out of Henry’s book.

To a one, they were laughing, joy spreading like wildfire. In the distance stood a castle, and Emma knew, it was _the_ castle, the one where Snow White married Prince Charming. Where Regina, as Queen, ruled the land with her iron fist of spells.

Where, if Emma wasn’t mistaken, she herself had been born.

She laughed, too, but through tears.

-

David looked down. He wasn’t wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket now; he was in the tunic he’d worn that last night at the castle, now torn and stained from blood. All around him, he could hear laughter, and he turned to see so many friends, old and new, and some enemies, appearing among the trees. 

It was broken, good and truly. The curse had finally been broken.

But he had to know. He had to see. If she was here, if she hadn’t been one of those who fled town. If she knew him.

He smiled and nodded a little at friends who called his name. He walked among them, being clapped on the back and congratulated on being home. Leroy – Grumpy – yelled out “We did it! They did it!” The fairies swirled around above, the tinkling sound of their happiness echoing gently. 

But where was Snow White?

-

She’d been Mary Margaret, only Mary Margaret, until less than five minutes ago. 

Snow White gasped as she looked down, realizing she was in the clothing she’d worn that last night. They hadn’t been ripped from time, sent back 28 years, but it was in some ways as if time hadn’t moved.

She put her hands over her mouth as she met Emma’s gaze. Emma. The daughter she’d sent away, the daughter she’d forgotten only moments after she’d kissed her goodbye. Now grown up, and a mother herself.

“Emma,” she breathed, and she stepped toward her. Emma, however, stepped back, eyeing her mother warily.

“Do you remember?”

Snow closed her eyes as tears spilled down her face. “I do. Emma, I remember.”

Emma reached for her then, and mother held daughter for the first time in far too long.

-

That was how David found them.

He came up behind Snow, and placed his hand on her hair.

She turned.

“I found you.”

Snow threw her arms around him, hiccuping as joy fought through every emotion imaginable. “Charming.”

They’d embraced often in the last several weeks, as David and Mary Margaret, as people cursed and unable to find happiness though they wanted it, so badly. Those stolen kisses and illicit hugs were there, and there was brokenness yet, things they would need to say. But this was a reunion of souls, this was triumph over darkness, and nothing would interrupt that.

“You’re alive!”

“You doubted?”

“I held you…you were gone, I thought you were gone….”

“I told you, Snow. I will always find you.”

She kissed him then, and as true love’s kiss does, it healed and swept away remnants of any curse. This one had power enough for the two of them, and they drank it in. Not caring who watched, David swept Snow up in his arms. 

All around them, their friends began to cheer. Emma, holding Henry’s hand, smiled; her heart was full and it hurt, and she wasn’t sure what was happening, but no one could see Prince Charming gaze at Snow White and be unmoved.

“You did it!” said Henry, squeezing Emma’s hand. “You did it!”

The curse, indeed, was broken.


End file.
